Richard Stallman's speech in Kolkata (Calcutta), August 2006

by Richard Stallman

There are a number of reasons why I'm not a communist. The first of
them is that I'm not against the idea of private business, as long as
it does not oppose people's human rights and the interests of
society. Business is legitimate as long as it treats the rest of
society decently.

Computing is a new area of human life. So we have to think about
the human rights associated with this. What are the human rights
software users are entitled to? Four freedoms define Free Software. A
programme is Free Software for a user if:

Freedom 0: Run the software as you wish.

Freedom 1: Share the source code and change it.

Freedom 2: Help your neighbour and distribute and publish.

Freedom 3: Help your community and distribute your modified
versions.

With these 4 Freedoms, you can live an upright life with your
community. If you use nonfree, proprietary software, the developer
has the power to decide what you can do. He can use that power over
you. Like Microsoft. That game is evil. Nobody should play it. So it's
not a question of beating Microsoft at its game. I set out to get away
from that game.

Once GNU-Linux was ready in 1992, it began to catch on. It was
reliable, powerful, cheap and flexible. Thousands and millions of
people began to use GNU-Linux. But the ideals of freedom began to be
forgotten though. In 1998, people stopped talking about Free
Software. Instead they said “open source”. That was a way
of not saying “free” and not mentioning the ideas behind
it. I don't disagree with that, but that's not what I am interested
in. What I'm really interested in most of all is to teach people to
value their freedoms and to fight for them. In software, as in the US,
our freedom is threatened. So the basic things we need to do are:
remember our freedom frequently, value it and insist on it. When
someone says they protect me from terrorism by taking away my
freedom—say No! Similarly, with software that threatens our
freedom, that might give us some temporary comparative
advantage—we should say No!

West Bengal should not follow the world trend. It should stand up
for freedom. That's different. No! I'm not going to let the world lead
me where it wants to go. I'm going where freedom is. If you're going
elsewhere—I'm not going there. It requires firmness, it requires
a decision that says freedom matters and hence it must be promoted.
Even if that's inconvenient. Freedom needs some sacrifices, some
inconvenience, some price. But it's a small price to pay.

By globalisation, people usually mean globalisation of the power of
business. Business should not have political power. Otherwise
democracy becomes sick. And with globalisation of business power, this
political power is enhanced. Free trade treaties are designed to
attack democracy. For instance, it explicitly allows any business to
sue government if a law makes its profit less than it has been.
Companies have to be paid for the permission to do anything of social
or environmental importance. Not all free trade treaties do this
explicitly. They do it implicitly. Companies can threaten to move away
elsewhere. And they do use this threat.
This actually happened some
years ago, with the EU software patents. The govt of Denmark was
threatened that if they did not support this the company would move
the business elsewhere. This tiny threat was sufficient to blackmail
the govt of Denmark. If you allow a foreign mega-corporation to buy a
domestic corporation, you are allowing it to buy a weapon pointed
against your country. The environment, public health, general
standards of living—are all important, and free trade treaties
should be abolished. They are harmful to freedom, health and the lives
of people.

I do not accept the term “intellectual property”. The
very term is biased and confusing. It talks about useful techniques
and works. It presumes they are “property”. It prejudges
such questions. There's also a more subtle problem. It lumps together
all the diverse things and makes it look like you can talk about all
of them together. Copyright, patents, trade laws—are all very
different. It takes the geatest efforts of the best scholars to
overcome the confusion caused by the term “intellectual
property” and to discuss the details of these individual
items.
The
GATT Treaty and the TRIPS—actually it should be
called Trade-related Impediments to Education and Science. Free trade
and enhancement of world trade harms democracy. When you globalise
something evil, it becomes a greater evil. And when you globalise
something good, it becomes a greater good. Human knowledge and
cooperation are such “goods”. The Free Software Movement
is a part of that. It is the globalisation of one area of human
knowledge, namely software. Through global cooperation like this, you
get freedom and independence for every region and every country.

Proprietary software is a colonial system. It's electronic
colonialism. And not by a country, but by a corporation. Electronic
colonial powers keep people divided and helpless. Look at the end-user
licensing agreement. You don't have the source code, you are
helpless. You can't share, and so you are kept divided. National
colonial powers recruit local elites and pay them and keep them above
the rest of the people, working for the colonial masters. Today we see
electronic colonial powers recruit native zamindars to keep the system
intact. Microsoft sets up a research facility and in exchange it keeps
its grip firmly on everyone else. Govts and schools are in their
grip. They know how to do this. They know how to buy govt support. But
what's the govt buying? Dependency, not development. Only Free
Software constitutes development. It enables any activity to be fully
under the control of the people doing it. Free Software is appropriate
technology. Proprietary software is not appropriate for any use.

The West Bengal govt has an opportunity to adopt a policy of firm
leadership in this regard. This will give a boost to human resource
development. Free Software respects people's freedom. Govt has an
influence on the future of society. Choosing which software to teach
students: if you teach them Windows, they will be Windows users. For
something else, they need to learn, and make the effort to learn
something else. Microsoft knows this. So it donates Windows to
schools. Addiction (through using unauthorised software use) only
helps them. They didn't want to leave anything to choice, so they give
Windows free to schools. Like injecting a dose. The first dose is
gratis. Afterwards it's not gratis, either for them or their
employers. This is a way to impose their power on the rest of society
and its future. Schools have a mission to society. This mission
requires teaching students to live in freedom, teaching skills to make
it easy to live in freedom. This means using Free Software.

Free Software is good for computer science education, to maximise
the potential of natural programmers. It gives students the
opportunity to really learn. It's good for the natural programmers. If
you have proprietary software, the teacher says “I don't
know”, “You are not allowed to know, it's a secret.”
So the alternative is to give him the source codes and let him read it
all. They will then learn to be really good programmers.
But the most
crucial reason is for the sake of moral education. Teaching them to be
good corporations and benevolent, helpful citizens. This has to be
taught. School has to teach by example. If you bring software to
class, you must share this with other kids. Or don't bring it. Schools
must follow their own rule, by bringing Free Software to class.
Schools should use 100% Free Software. No proprietary software should
be used in schools. Public agencies, after a migration period, should
use Free Software. All software development must run on Free Software
platforms. And if it's released to the public, it must be Free
Software. (Free: as in free speech, not free beer.)

One easy and useful way to put Free Software in schools—is to
participate in the “1 Laptop per Child” programme. India
recently pulled out of this programme, I'm told. I'm told the Indian
govt is making lots of laws to make multinational corporations
happy. Maybe this was to make Microsoft happy. Even if India is not,
West Bengal can participate in the 1 Laptop per child programme. I can
put them in touch with the people developing that machine.

The Govt of India is considering a vicious new copyright law,
imitating US law, in favour of large businesses, and against its
citizens. The only emergency I can see that requires this being rushed
through is catastrophic shortfall in the dream profits of some
businesses! Foreigners should not have political power. In my case, I
don't.